Since Affirmed won the Triple Crown in 1978, Big Brown, above, is the 11th horse to win the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. / Julie Jacobson/The Associated Press

Written by

Sam Borden

Journal News columnist

History is the stomachache you never want to go away. It's a cold sweat, clammy fingers and a feeling that magic might happen today if everything goes just right. It is, as much as anything else, the purest hope of all.

You don't get many chances at history. Not the real kind, at least. But today, at a racetrack on Long Island, a horse named Big Brown gets his chance to run into the record books and complete the Triple Crown. Gets the chance to try to touch permanence.

"It's just unbelievable," J.P. Constance said. "It's something you get to do once in your lifetime if you're really, really, really lucky. And we were."

Constance is a part-owner of Funny Cide, the New York-bred gelding who won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in 2003, then went through the same circus Big Brown has navigated over the past few weeks as the world watched him prepare for glory. Ultimately, Funny Cide - like every other horse that has tried for the Triple Crown over the past 30 years - fell short, beaten by Empire Maker in the Belmont.

Yet Constance and his five co-owners, all longtime friends from a tiny town near Saratoga, still have drinks together every Friday night and reminisce about their time in the spotlight and their flirtation with forever.

"I remember leaving the hotel to go to the track and we were going to get on the bus and there was just an unbelievable herd of reporters and photographers and one of the writers said to me, 'How does it feel to be a rock star?' " Constance said. He laughed then. "The next morning after Funny Cide got beat we came downstairs and there was nobody. Just an empty lobby."

Pat Chapman thought her horse had done it. She and her husband, Roy, were the owners of Smarty Jones, who won the first two legs of the Triple Crown in 2004. Sitting in the stands at Belmont and watching Smarty turn for home with a gap of several lengths between him and his closest pursuer, she allowed herself to believe just for a second that they had done it.

Smarty's trainer, John Servis, was sitting nearby and he could see that Smarty's strides were shortening while the gallops of Birdstone, a 36-to-1 shot no one had imagined would be anywhere near the front, were getting longer. "John could see it," Pat Chapman said, "but I didn't. I thought he had it. I didn't even know which horse it was because I had lost track of every horse in the race. I had no idea because my eyes were only on this horse. I'm thinking, he's doing it and then 'What is this coming up behind him?' "

Smarty fell short, too, finishing second by a head, and leaving the Chapmans with disappointment, to be sure, but also appreciation for the opportunity they had been given. For a few weeks, at least, they were celebrities. Randy Chapman, one of Roy's sons, said even without the Triple Crown the experience was memorable because of how he got to see his father. Roy, who died two years ago at age 76 after battling emphysema, was in a wheelchair and using oxygen tanks throughout the Triple Crown run but made it to all three races and was a sudden celebrity.

"We saw some professional athletes and actors and famous people," Randy said. "They would probably see us today and not know who we were, but that day it was, 'Hey, hi, how you doing?' I remember the actor, the guy who played Paulie Walnuts in "The Sopranos" was introduced to me and he grabbed me and pulled me down the hall because he wanted to meet my father."

It was hard for Roy Chapman to keep up with the demands of the Triple Crown chase, and Pat said they would often come back to their hotel room "and he would just collapse." But he wanted to be a part of it, to share in the glow that comes from a horse who has done something incredible.

On the morning of the 2004 Preakness, the Chapmans were eating breakfast at their hotel in Baltimore when Jack Knowlton, another of Funny Cide's owners, approached them with a bit of advice. "He said if Smarty wins the Preakness, to make sure we look around and take it all in over the next few weeks because it will never get any better than this," Pat said. "That's what they had done, he said, and that's what we should do."

No one could deny that the Funny Cide crew had savored it all. Constance tells the story of their ride over to the track around noon on Belmont day, when all the families and friends of Funny Cide's owners had piled on to two rented yellow school buses. "Everyone was nervous and sort of quiet, and traffic was terrible so we're just creeping along the road," he said. "Finally, one of the guys threw a 20 out the window to someone walking by and had them run into a convenience store we were passing. Got us a 12-pack so we could relax a little."

A good idea, but it couldn't have helped much. The nerves don't go away, just like the hope doesn't go away. Horse races are the ultimate build-up in sports: months and years of work, followed by weeks and days and hours of anticipation. Then comes the minutes, just like they will tonight around 6:25. Three minutes around the track. That's it. Three minutes for history.